personavelvetroomdr | [open/intro]

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Ann knows this place.

This shade of blue, and the song...though its notes flow far more harmoniously than they had the last (and only) time she'd heard them, the melody itself is enough to make Ann's heartbeat kick up a notch. That song only plays in the Velvet Room--and the Velvet Room is not a place she wants to be. Lavenza had said it. Her gut had said it--and Elizabeth had confirmed it. The Velvet Room was in the control of Yaldabaoth, wearing the skin of Igor.

Ann had never met Igor, personally, but both Akira in the previous timeline and the Attendants she'd encountered had painted a vivid picture of him. Taking in her surroundings carefully (this Room matched neither the descriptions of a prison Akira had once given her, or the crumbling ruins Lavenza had pulled her into at the End of a World), Ann eyes the man she can only assume is Yaldabaoth. And, even if it is truly Igor...

She's never met the man, and she doesn't trust anything he has to say to her. She might not be garbed in her will of rebellion, currently, but Célestine is always with her, and steeling her spine with a little of her flame, Carmine stands tall and proud.

Ann takes in the doors. Makes a split second decision that she shouldn't just be rushing into making a decision; Lavenza, and Elizabeth, she trusts--and she's heard Elizabeth describe their siblings enough that she feels as though she can trust them too. She'll poke around in this unfamiliar Velvet Room for now, and see if she can't encounter one of them...or at least someone who can tell her what's going on.

[OOC: check out Ann's AU info and perms here!]

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An info broker? Ann supposes it's not the most outlandish thing she's heard since arriving here, but generally she'd have imagined Ren to be the sort of person who was friends with an info broker (and a whole gamut of shady people) rather than becoming one himself.

Thoughtfully, she considers the context clues he's given her. "You're not a Phantom Thief either, huh?"

"Technically I am! New recruit as of November." Having finished his pocky, he digs out his ice cream spoon. "I hope when you get home, you can tell your friends to be less gullible than the Phantom Thieves I know. If they just let in whoever asks, it's going to go badly for them eventually."

He digs into his ice cream. This new tell-anyone-who-asks strategy makes him feel weird in his stomach. Sometimes he's not sure why he does it; but then he thinks about when he kept everything a secret and he remembers again.

"Ooh, a newbie, huh?" Ann teases. "Congrats." She tries not to let the jealousy she feels show. She misses her friends, dammit.

The latter half of his statement makes her bristle, even if he's correct. 'They see the good in people' isn't always enough.

"Unfortunately, they don't even know I'm a Persona user," Ann says. "And at this point...things are a bit too precarious to be telling them." She's juggling too much already. She cannot have the Phantom Thieves added to the mix any more than they already are.

He frowns at her as he swallows his choco-strawberry ice cream. One second she seems exactly like a Thief, with the teasing and the prickliness, and then she says that. Takamaki has always been a pretty shit liar, but she's shit because she doesn't know how to act natural. This one is just taking a normal tone as she says things that seem to contradict each other.

"Precarious how? If you don't mind my asking."

Ann hums around a mouthful of ice-cream. "It's a long story, but basically I'm sort of a time traveler? Part of the deal I made makes me invisible to Yaldabaoth, so I can't risk connecting with the Thieves, even without becoming a member myself, or he might realize there's someone running around the Metaverse he can't see." Ann shrugs. "It's easier to get shit done if worrying about him just isn't a factor. So not telling them is just...it's better, that way. Smarter."

A time traveler?? ...No, you know what, time-traveler Takamaki isn't even the weirdest new person he's met this month. There's a giant Akechi bird, for fuck's sake. He can roll with it.

"Sounds lonely, though."

Ann doesn't even try for a smile; she knows that any she manages to plaster across her face would be weak and obviously false. "It is," is all she says in response, feeling her sigh down to her bones. "It is lonely, but it's worth it, I think. I don't mind it, if it's for them." Even if it hurts. Especially because it hurts.

What's worth it? What's she protecting them from? Why did she go back in time? Why Takamaki in particular?

He makes a sympathetic noise around a spoonful of his own ice cream. "Must've been a serious deal."

"Well, I did make it during the literal end of the world," Ann points out. "And if I hadn't made it...I wouldn't have been me, anymore." A starring feature in her nightmares, more than even the potential of her own failure: a world where Lavenza didn't manage to reach out to her in time, and she's still just living under Yaldabaoth's thumb, completely unaware of what's become of the world. Of what Akira had done to them, by taking that deal. A fate worse than death...

...Sounds familiar. (Or So He Thinks.)

"Let me guess. Maruki."

Ann's laugh isn't simply a laugh; it's bitterness represented in audible form. "You know, I'd never even thought of Maruki much before coming here and finding out he's some sort of...benevolent megalomaniac? But, no. My Akira made a deal with Yaldabaoth, when Mementos and reality were merging. He thought we were dead, and decided that...brainwashed versions of us were better than nothing, I guess."

She spits those last words out. She's fully aware she's being uncharitable; that there was more nuance and pain and love to Akira's decision than she could easily explain to a stranger in a handful of sentences. But she's still so angry about it--

--because if he hadn't taken that deal, they'd still all be together.

"...Wow. So the Phantom Thieves' leader has to make that decision twice?"

Akechi is strong. He'll make the right choice. But Ren doesn't like that he's going to be in that position at all, much less twice. For the first time, he wishes he came from a world where he led the Thieves instead. Just to spare Akechi from some of the fucking responsibility, the whole world always on his shoulders.

Then again, Akechi would probably be working for Shido in such a world. So he's probably still better off where he is.

Getting herself back under control and gathering her thoughts, Ann suppresses her own issues to be dealt with another day; business as usual.

"I don't know the circumstances of whatever deal Maruki tries to make," Ann says, "but with Yaldabaoth--when Mementos and reality become one, cognition blurs. Public opinion and belief in the Phantom Thieves is at the lowest it's ever been, and combined with that...well. I'm sure you get it, right? Akira thought we were dead, I think. I wasn't there when he made the deal, though, so I don't know for sure."

Ren chews contemplatively on the little brownie he got with his ice cream.

"It's basically the same thing," he says with his mouth full, before swallowing. "There's an Akechi here from a world where his Ren Amamiya made the same deal your Akira did, but with Maruki. Akechi was dead in reality, but he would live on in Maruki's reality as kind of a..." How the hell do you even describe Sparrow? "...Marukified version of himself. Brainwashed is a good word."

He should text Sparrow, actually. See how he's doing.

"Ah," Ann says. "Yeah, I think I met him shortly after I first got here, he seems a little..." Is there a polite way to say creepy? "...sad, I guess. Lonely." She stares down at the final melted dregs of her ice-cream contemplatively. "I suppose if he's been mind whammied by Maruki, that sort of explains why he reads as so...hollow."

It's...scary, to think that could have been her, in a world that wasn't--but only isn't because Lavenza managed a miracle.

"That's kind of fucked up," she comments. "But I guess it's mostly sad that we all keep finding ourselves in situations like this, haha. Having to choose, or being leverage in a choice..."

(Ann considers, just briefly, finding Maruki's Shadow in Mementos when she got back home and just...taking care of it. Nipping the problem in the bud. The thought makes her sick to her stomach...but so does he.)

"On the bright side... if there is a bright side. If you worked as leverage, your Akira must have cared about you a lot."

Ren thinks about that sometimes. It makes him feel cold and shaky to think about being Sparrow, but it doesn't feel good to know there's no danger of it, either. Sparrow had been loved, like Ann had been loved.

He is being pathetic again. Ever since he got back to his real age, it's never fucking stopped. He brings the paper cup to his lips and drinks the remnants of his ice cream.

"He loved me," Ann says simply, because she knows it to be true. "He loved all of us, and that's why he made the choice he did. It's because I love him that I can't hate him for it, really. Even if, by the slightest chance I were to ever meet him again...I don't know if I'd forgive him for it." Some things can't be taken back, after all. And Akira hadn't been the one to take back his decision at all; it was Ann who'd hit that undo button.

"It's awful," Ann sighs. "I just hope you never have to deal with anything like that, Amamiya-kun. It's not fair to put a decision like that on a teenager in the first place."

"Oh, it won't be me. It'll be my Akechi. He's the one who has to deal with shit like that." He twirls his long-handled ice cream spoon in his fingers. "He's strong enough to handle it. But I wish the world could give him a break. Just for one damn minute."

He sighs. "Anyway! This got depressing. Wanna go somewhere fun?"

Ann blinks at this information--though she supposes it makes sort of sense, given the colourful assortment of Goro Akechis she's met here and Ren's own admission that he was new to the Thieves--and then shrugs. Fuck it; he's been friendly enough and he had good taste in ice cream. Plus, she thinks she'd just about kill to be out of this room.

She smiles, all mischievous cat. "Sure. Got anywhere in mind?"

This Takamaki bears the weight of responsibility in a way the one in Ren's world doesn't, but they used to be the same, or similar enough. And Ren has gotten to know his world's Takamaki a little. Well enough for the ice cream, for one thing, and well enough to take a guess here too.

"I guess there's always Dome Town or something, but I was thinking Harajuku. All the shops are still there, you just don't have to pay. Endless free stuff." He raises his eyebrows.

It may call to mind the question of why his own clothes are shabby, a little. But never mind that.

Ann's pretty used to free fashion--from both her parents and some jobs she's worked, where they're happy to let you take home what you wore as an excuse to give you a smaller paycheck--but that doesn't mean she's tired of it. Never! She loves free stuff; who doesn't?

"We could get coffee, too," she suggests. "Make it a proper 'shopping' experience." She wonders if Ren will let her dress him up a bit...Akira was always so busy when she brought up the idea, but there's a part of her that's convinced he was just finding excuses to not play living Barbie doll.

And the thing is, Ren is so, so tired of putting on an act for other people, but when the topic comes up, he'll find that he doesn't mind letting Takamaki choose clothes for him. He hasn't been acting this whole time, really. He likes Takamaki, and he wants to be liked in return (desperately, more than anything, please someone), and if she hasn't figured out what he is from what he said before, she'll get there eventually. So he'll enjoy it while he can.

"Sounds good." He deposits his spoon and his empty cup on Igor's desk. The cryptic piece of shit can just deal with it. Disintegrate it with laser vision or something. "I'll probably need the fuel. I've never been on a real shopping trip like this before."

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